Review of Justice Social Work Statistics in Scotland – survey of users 2023

Results of survey

These are the headline findings from the data user survey. The responses to the questions have been supplied in the tables and charts in the accompanying spreadsheet. Annex A contains a list of the questions.

Background information on users

While there were 33 people who responded to the survey, two responses contained no answers and there were therefore 31 full responses to the survey:

• 68% (21) were responding on behalf of a group or organisation
• 32% (10) were participating as individuals

Of the 21 who responded on behalf of a group, 71% (15) were from the local government sector. The remaining respondents were from central government, other public sector organisations and the voluntary sector.

How often statistics are used

Justice social work statistics are currently being used by 94% of responders (29), with the remaining 6% (2) saying that they intended to do so in the future.

The questionnaire asked how often users currently referred to the publication and its tables throughout the year.

• at least half reported using the publication, publication tables and local authority tables about three or four times a year
• around 10-15% looked at them monthly
• only the local authority tables had a percentage for ‘never accessing’ (7%)

How statistics are being used and how useful they are

For all of the uses except one, more than three-quarters of people responded that the data either met their requirements or was useful for their requirements.

• the highest was 97% for general awareness of trends/issues, then 93% for assisting with research/analysis, and reporting about local authorities.

Main topic of interests

The data users were asked to supply up to three main topics of interest in justice social work statistics that they were most likely to use:

Table: Main topic of interest, based on 29 responses

Community payback orders, diversion from prosecution and criminal justice social work reports were the most used by respondents.

For the remaining topic areas, low scores do not necessarily indicate that data is not used for those areas. It merely indicates that these areas were not among the most likely that users would access.

​​​​​​​Justice social work statistics publication commentary

Of the 29 who said they currently used justice social work data, 79% (23) read the publication commentary. Of these 23, 91% (21) found the commentary clear and concise. A free text field was supplied to provide possible improvements to the commentary. There were a number of positive comments on how the commentary stands at present, as well as comments on how it could be improved. A summary of the suggestions is provided below:

• key points at the beginning of each topic would be helpful, to aid with skim reading.
• text could be more broken up with more infographics and graphs.
• the number of hyperlinks in the body of the text is distracting.
• the style is aimed at people who work in justice social work and can be harder to understand if you are not from a social work background.
• summaries would be useful.

​​​​​​​Justice social work statistics tables – national and local authority

Of the 29 who said they currently used justice social work data, 97% (28) accessed the publication tables. Of these 28, 75% (21) accessed the main Scotland level tables referred to in the publication and 61% (17) accessed the data behind the charts.

All of the 28 respondents who accessed the publication tables also accessed the local authority level tables. Among those 28 respondents:

• the most popular local authority table was community payback orders, with 93% (26) accessing them.
• diversion from prosecution and criminal justice social works reports were the next most popular with over 80% accessing them.
• the lowest was fiscal work orders but this still had over half of respondents accessing them (54%).

Only 68% (19) of those who reported accessing the published tables were from local authorities, showing that lower-level geography is important to all data users.

A free text field was supplied to enable respondents to provide possible improvements to the tables. A summary of the suggestions on table improvements are provided below:

• streamlining tables – to make it easier to find data.
• adding filters to allow local authority comparisons and comparisons over years.
• more percentage tables to help with comparisons.
• making tables easier to compare local authority totals with national totals.

Less respondents were aware of the data held as open data on the website www.statistics.gov.scot. Of the 29 people who said they currently used justice social work data, only 72% (21) were aware. A third of those who were aware did not access any of the datasets. The most popular of the open datasets was the one giving figures for community payback orders commenced by gender and age group.

​​​​​​​Requests for changes

A free text field was supplied to provide an opportunity to ask what tables users would like in the future and how they would use this data. There were also further free text fields for any new information people wanted to see included and for any general comments they wanted to provide. Where any of these comments involved data, they have been included in this section.

A number of these requests are out of the scope of this data review but have been summarised for interest for other areas of the Scottish Government’s Justice Analytical Services. Where a request has been mentioned by more than one respondent, this has been highlighted.​​​​​​​

Possible requests that could be within scope need to be evaluated and discussed with relevant Scottish Government teams and the Local Authority Social Work : Justice group. These requests must be evaluated to determine it the data is held and the resources required to amend the collection is possible.

The information below must be considered with feedback from the stakeholders’ meetings that happened throughout the year. The actions to be taken on all the requests are summarised in the recommendations section.

Possible requests within scope requiring minor changes:

• collecting whether a structured deferred sentence is high or low tariff.
• unpaid work hours to support monitoring of system.
• where services are shared, could they be split by local authority area.
• diversion from prosecution reasons for being assessed unsuitable.
• drug treatment and testing orders reason for being assessed unsuitable.
• more information in relation to types of license for throughcare.
• more information on recall of statutory throughcare.
• more information on age, gender, and other characteristics.

Possible requests within scope requiring major changes:

• more timely statistics to support community justice strategy.
• creation of social work family grouping for key comparator purposes.
• criminal justice social work conversion data – a need for unit level data to see how preferred options compare to main outcomes.
• more regular updates on local authority data.
• more information on bail statistics to support any change in legislation that affects justice social work.

Requests currently outwith the scope of this data review (at the time of the document being published):

• Community Justice Performance Framework information by local authority with commentary. (Data for the framework from justice social work is already published. An annual progress report is published by Community Justice Scotland). (3 requests)
• qualitative data from clients and staff in justice social work on services (2 requests) (Data not held by the Scottish Government).
• create a community justice package combining Scottish prison data, to develop services to support individual release from prison into the community.(All datasets required for such a research project are not held by the Scottish Government).
• more information on the progress of individuals that are given home leave while in custody. (Data not held by the Scottish Government).
• information about progression through custody. (Data not held by the Scottish Government).
• Caledonian programme by local authority (Data on the administration of the Caledonian programme is not held by the Scottish Government. Where CPO requirements include a programme requirement, statistics on the different types can be produced. This would include the number on Caledonian programmes).
• diversion from prosecution information on types of alleged offences and rates of attrition (Data not held by the Scottish Government).
• data for the funding formula for social work at local authority level (Information held by Scottish Government: Local Government Finance)
• continuation of experimental data in relation to reconviction rates at local authority level. (Information published, latest Supporting documents - Reconviction Rates in Scotland: 2019-20 Offender Cohort - gov.scot (www.gov.scot))
• information on offence types for people on fiscal work orders. (Data not published due to ongoing data quality/completeness issues).
• standardised qualitive data on the impact of interventions. (Information on programmes would become available when the Scottish Government is required to publish research for monitoring and evaluation purposes).​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​Other comments on justice social work

From the free text responses, 11 respondents took the time to offer positive feedback on justice social work statistics. The main theme from these comments was that the data was used to support a lot of the respondents’ work, especially the local authority level tables. There were no free text comments to suggest that any information should be removed or was irrelevant. As seen in section 3.7, there is an appetite for more information. From the responses provided throughout the questionnaire, the data users of justice social work statistics tend to either work in this area or support community justice. They tend to have a higher understanding of justice social work than the public, with a need for more in-depth data.​​​​​​​